I'm 6 hours into it and have probably seen 80% of the map. Supposedly the game is around 8-10 hours if played leisurely. Overall I've enjoyed this and don't regret paying full price. The game is on the easier side of metroidvanias, only moderately challenging during some boss fights. The death penalty of cutting max HP like Dark Souls 2 is apparently a deal-breaker for many on reddit--it's probably the main source of angst and complaint about this game. Using the standard currency dropped by enemies you can repair the HP bar at fast travel points, but by mid-game when you're wanting to rush back to a boss, it means having to farm a bit. On normal, the enemies scale to your level which is indeed dumb and a lazy effort to increase difficulty for trash mobs that are already bullet sponges. Scaling discourages grinding, too, a temptation you'll have once you start finding more modules (equivalent to Hollow Knight charms) and need to level up to equip them. I started another game in explorer mode to see how differently it played. Only changes I noticed are the removal of the death penalty and scaling mechanic. I'd suggest explorer mode for a better experience. HP bloat only serves to aggravate and waste time when you've memorized enemy patterns.
I would naturally recommend other metroidvanias before this one, but we've had some disappointing ones lately such as Moonscars and Salt and Sacrifice. So for the short but sweet quality you get here, it's a 8/10.
+ Atmosphere is excellent between the music, art style, and mood conveyed by the biomes and NPCs you find. An impressive achievement for an indie developer and almost at Hollow Knight quality.
+ Metroid-like combat is pretty good, mixing shooting and melee. You can level up three stats (gunpower, vigor, and resolve) depending on your combat preferences of being tanky or doing ranged damage
+ Interesting gun variety, melee weapon movesets, and secret items to find (one gives you an extra mid-air jump so you can triple jump).
+ Exploration is rewarded and balanced well; the urge to find modules, weapons, and abilities like dash and double jump kept me trudging deeper into the map.
+ Story, writing, and voice-acting is uneven at times but surprisingly above average; I've seen much worse in AAA games.
- Too short for a game that was in development this long.
- Few save and fast travel points. Backtracking is a staple of the genre, but the map didn't have to be this stingy with checkpoints.
- The main objective entails finding ship parts strewn about all corners of the world map. Once you pick up a part, you can't use fast travel points and must backtrack across multiple biomes. Special enemies and obstacles spawn while carrying a ship part. I didn't care for this design decision because it felt like an artificial inflation of the game length: force the player to walk back through all the areas again and fight harder enemies.
- Bosses are unremarkable and none seem very grandiose or memorable.
Tip for anyone wanting an easier experience: at the start of the game, if you take a left instead of a right you can immediately fight some sort of miniboss. When you're learning the controls and how combat works this is a frustrating fight at level 1. He is an absurd bullet sponge. But you can run away from his projectiles and jump over him. If you take him down, he'll drop a blaster rifle that carried me through half the game. Otherwise ranged combat in the early game is a slog with the basic gun.
